


Conjoined

by TigerDragon



Series: Prerogative of the Brave [4]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always-a-girl!Erik, Child Death, Coming of Age, Compromise, F/M, First Kiss, Implied Underage, Minor Character Death, Multiple Personalities, Origins, Psychological Trauma, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Sibling Rivalry, Teen Romance, Teenagers, Telepathy, Underage Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dislocated shoulder, a private kiss, a negative mirror-image bedroom: funny how it's the little things that make people who they are. </p><p>In the world where Charles Xavier married Erika Lehnsherr, Jean Grey isn't the only girl who gets to be real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who've been following the _Prerogative of the Brave_ universe for a while, welcome back. For those who are new, we hope you enjoy yourselves and encourage you to take a look back at the other stories in this series - we're very proud of them, and we love getting the chance to work with these characters. Speaking of which, obviously, we don't own the X-men or any of Marvel's IP generally (if we did, trust us, you'd have noticed the difference). 
> 
> That aside, a few notes on this story. I've always been a huge fan of the X-men, and of some of less popular members of the cast in particular - Scott Summers and Jean Grey get a lot of grief in the fandom for being stock, boring, not sufficiently edgy or just plain old, but they're concepts with immense potential. The fact that very few writers in the last half-century of X-men stories have managed to get much out of that potential is a long-term pet peeve of mine, so we've decided to address it here. I could go on, but I think I'll just let the story do the explaining for us.
> 
> For anyone who's following our chronology, by the way, this story begins with an accident in 1964 (between _A Degree of Hope_ and _Indiscretions, Youthful and Otherwise,_ ) and ends with a compromise in the winter of 1971 (Just after _Where You Hang Your Hat_ ). We've tried to be reasonably faithful to the events and style of the period, but we're well aware the teenagers in this story sound more modern than period - we just don't have the expertise to make them sound authentically groovy, so we took artistic licence and ran with it. Anyway, enough talk from us: settle in, get comfortable, and enjoy the show.

Some people have a moment, a crystalline burst of clarity that tells them they’re different and that the world everyone else takes for granted doesn’t quite apply to them, that the opportunities or the promise or the pain of the world won’t be quite the same no matter how hard they try. Some people look different, sound different, stand differently right from the first moment and never have any doubts, because the world won’t let them forget for a moment that They Are Not Like Everybody Else. Some people bury their difference in a hole so deep and so dark that nobody ever finds them, not even them, and sneak through the world like ghosts with a part of themselves missing but unmissed.  
  
It’s not like that for a telepath. It’s not like that for Jean Grey.   
  
_Telepaths,_ Mister Xavier will tell her when she’s older, when she’s fourteen and full of certainty that she wants to know everything there is to know about their mutual ‘condition,’ _often develop their mutant powers - the symptoms of their mutation, if you will - at a very early age. I suspect that it has to do with how integrated our powers are to our neurology, that when the brain finishes developing past a certain level our talents can’t help but wake up. My own abilities manifested for the first time when I was eight years old, but there were flashes before that - moments of insight, of knowing, that I cannot account for without the possibility that my telepathy was active even then._   
  
Jean will nod her understanding, as if that all makes perfect sense, and try not to think about this moment that is happening here, and now, and for the rest of her life.  
  
Sasha, who likes ponies and telescopes and wants to be a pirate when she grows up because she doesn’t know that pirates aren’t real, darts out into the street for the ball just as a shiny red sedan careens around the corner.  She doesn’t have time to scream. Jean hears the car’s engine, the screech of its tires, and the terrible dull wet _thump_ of impact. Sasha cries out silently in her head because the bone and muscle that should let her speak is gone, pouring agony out into the world like molten metal that only Jean can touch, and it is the loudest sound Jean’s ever heard. It’s coming from inside, like Jean’s blood and bones are screaming, and no matter how hard she presses her palms to her ears it won’t stop.  
  
Sasha’s mother comes running, and Jean can hear her too, this scream tearing her chest down the middle, _NO NO NO NO NO_ pulsing out in torrents of heart’s blood that nobody can see. Neighbors start to look out of windows, turn around in the street, and their small horrified vibrations are harmony and descant to the pain that’s filling up Jean’s world.  
  
The high school kid behind the wheel gets out, hands to his face, and his prayers stab back and forth through Jean’s body: _Oh God please save her, please take me instead, let me die let me die not her let me die._  
  
Sasha’s sounds coalesce, become a single bright note too piercing to bear, and then she’s gone. That sound is replaced by another from her mother, and more neighbors, Sasha’s brother, the paramedics. There’s no room in Jean’s head for herself anymore.  
  
She feels the brush of someone moving past her left arm from behind, and then she’s watching herself and everything from far away. It’s all quiet where Jean is now, and she sobs in relief as she sinks into blackness.  
  
Sometimes, Jean isn’t sure that she actually woke up from that blackness. Sometimes she thinks that everything since then, Miss Lehnsherr and Mister Xavier and Scott and the big house in Westchester, must be a dream the nine year old girl in a coma who didn’t know telepathy could hurt until her best friend died has been having ever since.  
  
When she has that thought, though, she tells herself it can’t be true. Her imagination isn’t good enough for a dream this big. Not strange enough, mutant that she is, for all the human strangeness she hears on a daily basis, like how Scott will recite the batting and slugging percentages of the Dodgers to himself when he starts to get angry. Or the way that Ororo hates wearing skirts but still wears them instead of trousers because she doesn’t want people to think she isn’t respectable, or that Heather sometimes stops time just so she can sneak in on Mister Xavier and Miss Lehnsherr and try to figure out how kissing boys is supposed to work.   
  
Or that Miss Lehnsherr keeps a ten-day supply of matzo crackers and a pot of horseradish in a locked metal box under her bed just in case there’s no other food in the house. Yuck.  
  
So the mansion in Westchester is real, and the people in it are real, and Jean is real, but something else about Jean still isn’t normal, not even for a house full of mutants.  
  
She was ten when she first realized that there were minutes, hours, _days_ she didn’t remember, that Mister Xavier would talk to her about conversations they’d had that she didn’t remember having and Heather would ask her to return things she didn’t remember borrowing and Scott would talk about swimming in the river down in the woods behind the mansion that she didn’t remember doing.  
  
Then Scott ran away for a day or two and the kitchen was all torn up, and nobody would talk to her about how it happened except to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, except that she had this terrible feeling that it _was_ her fault somehow because she’d been standing in the kitchen washing dishes with Heather and then she was sitting out in the hall outside with Miss Lehnsherr, who had that look on her face she only got when something was wrong and she didn’t want to talk about it.   
  
It made Jean afraid that there was something wrong with her, a secret so alarming that her new teachers wouldn’t tell her and so terrible that they couldn’t fix it.  
  
She couldn’t do anything about that. She’d just learn and try to be good and hope that the secret went away. She hoped that if it didn’t disappear she’d be strong enough to stay safe and not hurt anyone when they had to ask her to leave.   
  
Two years go by, and nobody asks her to leave. She has days when she hardly loses any time at all and days she doesn’t even remember, but people mostly stop talking about the time she doesn’t remember like she should. She doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it makes the secret easier to ignore and so she does. She learns how to filter her telepathy better, how to hear what she wants from farther away and not hear what she doesn’t want to hear nearly as often, and she practices with her telekinesis until she can float a pencil and make it do tricks like a pet dog.   
  
She’s stronger and knows it. It’s a good feeling, one she reminds herself of when she can’t lift her backpack with her mind or say goodnight to Mister Xavier when he’s across town at one of his fundraiser parties or when Miss Lehnsherr can’t be there to tuck her in at night because she’s away and she has to go to sleep in the dark by herself. Well, not really by herself - there’s always someone in the house she can reach out and touch with her mind when she needs not to be lonely - but without someone _right there_ to help her fall asleep.   
  
Then Ororo tried to climb the biggest tree on the estate, the old oak down by the river that looked like it had been there forever,and Jean had brought a book and snuck after her so she could peek through Ororo’s eyes when she got to the top. But Ororo missed a branch at the very top of the tree, lost her grip on the trunk and came tumbling down out of the sky. She was terrified and Jean could feel it, but then Ororo caught a breeze and started to fly and for a few seconds the nineteen year old girl who could call down storms like a pagan goddess of old was laughing in delight as she swooped down toward the ground in the arms of the wind. Jean was on her feet and laughing with Ororo’s joy and they were maybe ten feet apart when Ororo clipped the low, heavy branch of the old pine Jean had been reading under and plowed into the ground like a busted helicopter on TV.  
  
Something popped in Ororo’s shoulder, and the world went hot and white with pain.  
  
 _Shit!_ rang briefly but firmly in both their minds, and then Ororo was wincing and cradling her limp arm in her good one. “Sorry, Jean,” she ground out between clenched teeth, “Didn’t mean to project. Ow. Shit fuck damn ow. Fuck, language. Sorry.”  
  
Jean tried to breathe around Ororo’s pain, tried not to go away in her head, because Ororo was hurt and Miss Lehnsherr’s first aid training said you should never leave a hurt person alone except to go and get help, and going to her black place was _not_ getting help, so she didn’t. It was hard and terrifying and strange and it felt like her head was trying to unravel from the inside, but she didn’t and she was proud of that.   
  
“It’s okay,” she said, voice shaking with the fraction of Ororo’s pain that was still leaking all over her. “Good... um... good flying.”  
  
 _Shame about the landing, though. That sucked,_ a voice in her head that wasn’t Ororo’s said.  
  
Blinking, Jean looked to her left and saw another girl kneeling on the ground next to her and Ororo. Her hair and face and body all looked exactly like Jean’s did, but somehow all together the girl looked entirely different.   
  
Even while hissing in pain, Ororo rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I noticed that myself, thanks. Maybe less criticism and more calling for help, not-Jean? This really, really hurts.”  
  
“Baby,” Jean’s mouth said without consulting her. “Just hold still, and I’ll fix it as long as you don’t call me _that_ ever again.”  
  
 _Not-Jean? Baby?!_ Jean frowned in confusion, but her hands were doing helpful things like checking Ororo’s arm for breaks and doing unhelpful things like completely ignoring her fellow mutant’s pain at being manhandled.   
  
Now the girl was standing behind Ororo, resting one hand on the out-of-joint shoulder and the other on Ororo’s collarbone, and she made a face like she was kind of excited even if she was a little sorry. “This is gonna hurt, I bet. So don’t, y’know, cry or anything. That would be weird.”  
  
Whatever Ororo was going to say back to that was drowned out by another blast of white-hot pain that rolled over Jean like seeing fire through thick, clear glass - something she could see and feel the echo of, but not really touch. The girl gritted her teeth and held very still, and then Ororo’s arm was straight again. The weather-goddess took very deliberate breaths until only a dull ache was left behind in her shoulder, and Jean could relax, now that the trouble had passed.   
  
“Ugh. Thanks, Phoenix.” Ororo sounded like she’d just finished one of Miss Lehnsherr’s marathon training sessions, quiet and worn-out.  
  
“No problem. Just look out for branches next time, okay? If that had been your head, we would have had to tell somebody.” The girl with Jean’s face sounded like the idea of _telling_ was right up there with hot irons and fried lima beans.  
  
“Yes. Looking out for objects,” Ororo nodded in wide-eyed agreement. She sighed. “Why couldn’t I have developed some invulnerability, too? Flying is really going to suck if I go splat like everyone else.”   
  
“Doctor Lehnsherr says that pain keeps us humble,” the girl intoned with a cheerful malice that made Jean want to cover her mouth with both hands. “I guess you just need more humility, huh?”  
  
“Stop!”  Jean shouted. She was tired of only watching as her mouth spoke to her friends. It was too weird.

“But I didn’t...” Ororo started, wide-eyed and startled.  
  
“Not you,” the other girl said with Jean’s mouth, looking to her (Jean’s?) right and rolling her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping? You’re always sleeping when I’m around.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to leave hurt people alone,” Jean said, her firm conviction wavering under the dismissal of the other girl. “I wanted to help.”  
  
“You wanted to help.” The girl with her face raised an eyebrow in a way that reminded Jean of Miss Lehnsherr and made her want to slap the girl at the same time. “Seriously? This is the time you decide you want to help, when Ororo falls out of a tree? This is the time you decide to get your pampered butt out of bed and help out, when I get to do something cool like reset a shoulder _with my brain?_   You are so lame, Jean.”  
  
Tears began to sting Jean’s eyes, tears that appeared in the other girl’s -- Phoenix’s -- eyes. “You thought that was cool? Ororo _fell out of a tree_ and dislocated her _shoulder!_ She could have broken her neck! And you’re making fun of her and yelling at me and why are you so mean?” Now both girls began to sob.  
  
“This is officially setting my personal record for weird, you... um... two.” Ororo cleared her throat, and Jean suddenly got a crystal-clear image of herself - her own body - through Ororo’s eyes, standing there arguing with itself and crying. “I think we’re going to have to maybe tell somebody about this after all.”  
  
“No!” The other girl stamped her (their?) feet and glared down at Ororo. “We’ll so get grounded for this, and if I have to spend another afternoon stuck in our room watching her read and daydream about...”  
  
 _Stop!_ Jean thought, very loudly, and their mouth obediently stopped moving. Inside her head, she could feel the other girl glaring, and then Phoenix went on in a very loud mental stage-whisper that at least Ororo couldn’t hear. _I said,_ the other girl in her head enunciated with relish, _that if I have to spend another afternoon stuck in our room watching you read and daydream about SCOTT KISSING US without doing anything about it, I’m going to go crazy!_  
  
The shock of the tirade and the fact that, apparently, Phoenix agreed with her about Scott turned Jean’s sobs into swallowing hiccups. “Um. We could leave the part about the shoulder out? I’d like to talk to someone about suddenly meeting the other girl in my head. Please.”   
  
“Fine,” Phoenix sighed like one of those annoying teenage girls on television, “but talk to Doctor Lehnsherr. Charles will start sending us warm and fuzzy vibes to make himself feel paternal, and I’ll just want to beat him in the head with his chess set.”  
  
Jean was again shocked at how mean Phoenix was, but wound up giggling at the image of the chessmen floating around Mister Xavier’s head and taking turns rapping on his skull. “Okay. Miss Lehnsherr.”  
  
Ororo stood up very carefully and smiled a little at Jean - or maybe Phoenix, or maybe both of them - and shook her head like she was trying not to laugh. “Are you two always going to fight like this? Because I think I would find it very distracting to be stuck in a small room with Heather all the time and even then I wouldn’t have to talk to her about what we were wearing.”  
  
“Oh, God. You’re not serious, are you?” Phoenix groaned and pressed their face into their hands. “Because if I really have to have Miss Goody Two Shoes looking over my shoulder like the world’s most little lost guardian angel, I’m never going to get a boyfriend and my life will go from being annoyingly interrupted to totally not worth living.”  
  
“Like I _want_ to listen to you being mean to everyone,” Jean snapped. “Who invited you into my body, anyway?”  
  
“Why, you little....”  
  
Ororo sighed and started for the house without them, which neither of them noticed for about ten minutes. That part was a little embarrassing to explain to Miss Lensherr, especially when they couldn’t stop blaming each other for it long enough to actually explain that they hadn’t meant to let Ororo walk off on her own like that after she’d hurt her shoulder.   
  
“ _Meinen schätzchen,_ ” Miss Lehnsherr finally cut them both off, her lips curved up at the edges in the smile that wasn’t really so much a smile as a warning, “if you do not learn to be quiet and speak in turns, nobody will ever understand another word either of you says. As much as that seems to me to be a possibility with some merit at this moment, it would be best if you did not carry on so, yes?”  
  
Their mouth worked open and closed for a moment while they fought with each other and themselves. Then Jean nodded, and Phoenix answered. “Yes, Doctor Lehnsherr.”  
  
“Good.” Miss Lehnsherr did not - quite - sag with relief when she sat back in her chair. She had too much dignity for that. She only wanted to very, very badly. “Now, Phoenix, may I speak with Jean aloud first so that I can help her understand what is happening? Then I wish to speak with you.” It was amazing how Miss Lehnsherr could make seemingly voluntary requests sound like orders without raising her voice. Someday, Jean could hear Phoenix promising herself while they nodded, she was going to learn to do that.  
  
Then her head was quiet, and Jean let out a long breath.   
  
“Miss Lehnsherr,” she asked, the confusion and desperation she felt finally coloring her voice, “why is Phoenix in my head?” Her words dropped to a quieter tone, plaintive.  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”  
  
Miss Lehnsherr sighed softly and reached for Jean’s hand, taking it between both of hers, and they sat in silence for a few long heartbeats while Jean could feel Miss Lehnsherr’s mind probing and pulling at the problem, as if looking for just the right way to start explaining a mathematics problem or the function of an engine. No flash of relief or understanding illuminated her, and finally she began in a more halting voice than Jean had ever heard her use with anyone but Mister Xavier. “We first - I first - realized that you were having blackouts not long after you came to stay with us, Jean. At first we thought it was only your memory - that you were removing things that happened from your mind so that you would not have to deal with them, the way that you shut yourself off in your head after the accident that brought you to us - but then I began to notice how differently you behaved during the periods which you didn’t remember. Eventually, when I called you by name and you did not answer, I realized that it was not you I was speaking to at all. It was a very frightening moment for me, but more frightening for Charles, because when he had looked into your mind before he had only seen the dark places you had sealed up in your memory. Now he knew that there was something he had missed, something he had not seen. It disturbed him.”  
  
Jean swallowed, and Miss Lehnsherr held her hand more tightly. There was more there behind those words, the aftertaste of long and bitter arguments that Miss Lehnsherr and Mister Xavier must have sealed behind the locked doors of his mind, but Miss Lehnsherr did not explain and Jean didn’t ask. After a little while, Miss Lehnsherr went on. “At first she did not have a name, did not really even know herself - she was an elemental anger, a child lashing out to protect another against anything and everything that might threaten either of you - but eventually she came to know us as she came to know herself. To see herself as something separate from you, and yet something that was still somehow a part of you. Charles thinks that perhaps when Sasha had her accident and you felt her die, you were too young - your mind needed a defense, and so you hid and created for yourself a protector. I am not so sure, but however it is that she came to be, Phoenix has always been with you and yet you seemed not to know her. Charles felt that if your mind had kept that knowledge from you, there must be a reason, and that it might harm you if we told you of her before you discovered her for yourself. So we have said nothing, and taught Heather and Scott and Ororo to say nothing, and waited for this day. For you to discover her.”  
  
“Oh.” Memories crashed through Jean’s mind in a torrent. The missing time, the things she didn’t remember, all the things that didn’t match up. It was so obvious now that Phoenix was the secret.  “I feel kinda dumb now.”    
  
“Charles says that our minds have ways of keeping us from finding the things we aren’t ready for until we are ready for them.” Miss Lehnsherr’s mouth quirked up at the corner, and Jean could taste the warm edge of her silent laughter. “Of course, he often tells me this when I wonder why I did not fall in love with another man before him, so perhaps you should take it with a tablet of salt.”  
  
A tentative smile spread across Jean’s face. “Okay.” A moment later, her eyes drifted into the distance, and she looked troubled once more. “Is she...will she always be in my head?”  
  
“I do not know, truly,” her teacher - the closest thing she had had for three years to a mother - told her softly, voice rich and weary with the hard weight of experience. “But I think yes. She is as much a part of you as your telepathy or the color of your eyes, and you would not be you without her, yes? So it will be up to you and to her to decide how to live with what you are together.”  
  
She knew it was childish, but Jean couldn’t help her bottom lip sticking out. “It’s not fair.”  
  
“Ah, _meine schatz,_ the world has never been overrun with fairness.” Miss Lehnsherr leaned over to kiss her gently on the forehead, smoothing a stray lock of red hair from her face with fingertips textured by time and laboratory chemicals and the tiny scars that come from working sharp metal with one’s hands. “But at least you will never have to be alone, yes?”  
  
“I guess,” Jean answered, leaning into those hands.   
  
_It could be worse,_ Phoenix murmured in her head,  and she had the impression of her other self leaning into Miss Lehnsherr’s hands with that same longing trust but trying to be sneaky about it. _Though I can’t think how off-hand._  
  
 _Love you too,_ Jean answered sarcastically.  “Phoenix wants to talk now,” she said aloud to Miss Lehnsherr.  
  
“Are you ready for her to talk to me?” Miss Lehnsherr smiled very gently, with that patience that said she would wait out the heat death of the universe if that turned out to be necessary.   
  
Wrapping her arms around her teacher one last time, Jean nodded, and let herself go to sleep.  
  
As she drifted into the familiar warm fog, she felt the other girl stepping forward, and this time she wasn’t afraid.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hi, Red.” Slipping a well-muscled arm around her shoulders, John fell into step with her as she left their history tutorial with Mister McCoy and headed for Literature in the old drawing room with Ororo, all of twenty-one and wearing skirt-suits now like Miss Lehnsherr instead of sundresses and sweaters. Warmth sank into her where their bodies met. John was tall, taller than Scott, and so broad in the shoulders that she fit right into the crook of his arm like he could pick her right up if he wanted to. Which he could, but that wasn’t the point.  
  
“Hi,” she breathed, her spine going rigid as she stared at the floor and tried not to blush. John was nice enough, but in the six weeks since he and the other students in the first real ‘class’ at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters arrived he’d been getting more and more friendly with her and it was starting to bother her. Not that she wasn’t totally aware that considering herself Scott Summers’s girl was a little crazy when he was off at college learning how to be a teacher and they’d never once actually talked about anything like that anyway, but she still did, and John was getting awfully fresh for a guy walking to class with someone else’s girl.  
  
“Um, John,” Jean smiled awkwardly up at him. “Could you let go, please?”  
  
“Oh. Sure.” He let his arm drop away from her and shrugged his shoulders in a way that made his button-up shirt (on which Miss Lehnsherr insisted, in spite of modern notions like t-shirts) shift against the broad muscle of his chest in a very distracting way. There was a subtle flash of hurt in his sense, quickly hushed, and he smiled like it didn’t bother him. “So is this a public modesty thing that applies to all guys all the time, all guys some of the time, or just guys like me some of the time?”  
  
Jean blinked, discomfort temporarily replaced by indignant sympathy. “What? No. No! The guy who’s practically my uncle is blue and furry, and I don’t mind going downtown with him, I’m hardly going to mind being seen with an Apache.” She sighed. “I’m just not comfortable with being so ... you know... friendly. With a guy. Right now.”  
  
His eyebrow was going up skeptically, and suddenly she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with whether or not he actually believed she wasn’t bothered by his race. “John,” she began hesitantly, already silently hoping his answer would be no before she even asked the question, “have I ... um... given you mixed signals about this? Before?”  
  
His expression of guarded hurt broke down into an incredulous stare that suggested she’d just asked him if he’d ever heard of the color purple or something equally nonsensical.  
  
She winced. The second-worst part of sharing a body was when people got hurt. “John, I know we’re at a mutant school, but this is going to get weird.” She took a deep breath. “My name is Jean, and I like biology, walking in the woods, pastel colors and baking. My best friend is Scott Summers,” and she very pointedly ignored the snort of disbelief from the back of her mind, “and I want to work for the Xavier Foundation when I grow up.”    
  
_Great_ , the voice in the back of her head groused, _could you sound any more Plain Jane Vanilla, please? He’s totally going to freak and/or think we’re a loser._  
  
_Would you rather he give up on you because of me?_  
  
_No, I’d rather you let a cute boy walk you to class with his arm around you and you not make a big thing out of it. I mean, seriously, this is a horrible sacrifice to make? We haven’t even had a **date** yet and I have to tell him I’m sharing a body with the most boring girl scout ever now, before we kiss or dance or...._

 _Ewww. Stop. Now. Just stop._  
  
_Oh, come on. Have you **seen** this guy play baseball? Or run? Or, you know, just stand there?_  
  
John was looking at her expectantly, or maybe like he was expecting her to start speaking in tongues. Jean hoped too much time hadn’t gone by. Sometimes that happened.  
  
She shook her head. “Anyway. I’m not the only one in my head, John.” She closed her eyes and let go of what she and Phoenix had taken to calling the steering wheel. _Your turn._  
  
“This is so gonna be simpler if I just show you.” Phoenix stepped forward, pressing their body up against John in a way that was _so_ not okay with Jean right now, and rested her fingers on his forehead in the way the kids were already starting to call the Xavier Nerve Pinch. Jean felt his mind jerk a little at the brush of their mutual touch against it, then settle, and when Phoenix stepped back again and made the handoff she could already tell he was seeing double.  
  
_Oh, god. You can’t wear that while I’m standing here, you just can’t. I’m going to die,_ Jean groaned inside where only Phoenix could hear her, because the short skirt and leather jacket that Phoenix’s mental image was sporting - while leaning up against the wall in a way that did nothing modest to the skirt, no less - was so not okay.  
  
_It could be worse. I could have made him wait while I went upstairs to change out of that stupid sweater jacket you’re wearing._ Phoenix threw a look at the back of Jean’s head, then grinned at John and spoke with a lot more confidence than she felt (Jean could tell). “Hey, handsome. I’m Phoneix, and the girl sporting the ‘50’s schoolgirl look is Jean, but you should totally keep calling us Red. It’s cute.”  
  
“Oh,” John said, looking between the images of the two girls. “That makes a lot more sense. Why didn’t you tell me before?”  
  
“It’s embarrassing,” Phoenix sighed. “Besides, I figured you knew. Would I ever in a million years wear that to class?”  
  
_Beause ‘Contemporary Whore’ is such a better look?_  
  
A slow grin was growing on John’s face.  “If you told people who was who, they’d know you wouldn’t.”    
  
_He has us there, Phoenix._  
  
_Shit, he totally does. That’s just hot._ “If I had the body right now, I’d totally be kissing you. Just so we’re clear.”  
  
Jean blushed, or did the psychological equivalent. _You can. You'll owe me big time, but you can._  
  
_Awesome. So worth it._ They switched out again, leaving mental-image Jean standing off to the right and Phoenix in the body, and then Phoenix practically jumped on top of John and started mauling him right there in the hallway. It was a public indecency charge just waiting to happen.  
  
_Oh, god._ Jean went as far back into the dark place as she could. _She owes me so, so big._  
  
When the world came back to her, she’d missed all her afternoon classes and dinner, though her full stomach and the mostly-dispelled writer’s cramp in her right hand told her that she’d at least attended both. The record player was on, playing something particularly noxious by the Rolling Stones, and the body was lounging on their bed in a scant little party dress and black silk stockings that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in if she’d had any say in the matter.  
  
Where they came from was a problem for another time, though.  
  
“Mmm. Hey.” Phoenix’s voice came out of their mouth in a sex-kitten purr that she had to have been practicing - there was no way their vocal chords produced a sound like that naturally. “Thanks for earlier. You have a good nap?”  
  
Sitting the image of herself down near the head of the bed - it was just easier to project when they were alone, they’d discovered, because both of them trying to use the body at once got confusing and exhausting - Jean nodded. “Good enough. You seem pretty happy yourself.”  
  
“Totally missed getting detention by two minutes, tops. But so, so worth it.” Phoenix stretched like a cat, and Jean was suddenly very aware of the amount of physical development they’d done in the last two years. Not that she hadn’t noticed, exactly, but there was a difference between bitching about her legs aching and having to buy new bras and suddenly looking at your body like it belong to someone else and thinking there was a reason that guys kept trying to buy you sodas. Phoenix, oblivious to her moment of enlightenment, just kept talking. “He is such a good kisser, too. I mean, could he be any more the Apache James Dean if he tried?”  
  
Trying not to think about John’s mouth and her mouth in conjunction, Jean shrugged. “No?”  
  
“Definitely no.” Phoenix rolled over enough to look up at her and grinned lopsidedly. “I could totally get him to kiss you, too. Then you’d know what I was talking about.”  
  
Jean’s eyebrows tried to climb into her hair. “You are so happy and not-mean right now that I have no idea how to respond to that.”  
  
“Say yes,” the red-headed devil on her shoulder advised cheerfully. “Just think of it as practicing for Scott, close your eyes and think of England.”  
  
Jean rolled her eyes. “Look, if it makes you easier to live with, you can kiss him all you want--well, not in class or anything--but I am not interested.” She snorted a laugh. “Besides, we’re American.”  
  
“You know I can tell when you’re lying, right? What with sharing your brain and everything?” Phoenix’s grin grew into a huge, wicked smile. “I can totally tell you’re interested.”  
  
Jean glared. “He’s cute, okay? But there’s a difference between getting blushy and wanting to take off our panties.”  
  
“Fair.” Phoenix shifted onto her belly and rested her head in her palm, looking up at Jean, and suddenly her emotions were different - deeper, fiercer, more serious. Intense, the way they were intense when she called fire out of the air or lifted dead trees like matchsticks. “I don’t want to... you know... wait. On that. I mean, we’re going to go on a few dates and I’m gonna make him work for it because I’m not cheap, but I’m not going to wait until Prince Red-Eyed Charming gets back to be a woman.”

Jean considered this. 

The public service announcements, the good girls on TV, the horror movies where anyone who got naked was guaranteed to die - all of it pressed up against Jean’s teeth and puddled there unspoken. She felt like she was supposed to be horrified, or shocked, or something. And completely separate from all the outside pressure, she didn’t want to go to bed with anyone, not even Scott, just yet. She didn’t feel ready for that.  
  
It might have been seeing their body as sexual for the first time or it might have been how truly happy Phoenix was, or maybe even something else - maybe the crazy old ladies who said rock and roll would steal your virtue had a point - but she couldn’t bring herself to just dismiss the idea out of hand.  
  
Jean looked at the other young woman who lived in their body, as serious as she’d ever been in her life. “Okay. But I have to be all the way asleep, and you _have_ to use protection.”  
  
Phoenix made a face - not so much arguing as finding the idea unpleasant - but Jean didn’t back off. “Come on,” she pressed, “you want babies even less than I do.”  
  
“Okay. Okay!” Phoenix sat up herself and held up both hands as if waving a surrender. “I give! I’ll use protection. Since when do you know about that, anyway?”  
  
Jean snorted. “Just ‘cause I don’t want to doesn’t mean I’m deaf and blind. I was there when Miss Lehnsherr gave the talk that I know you listened in on.”  
  
Phoenix giggled like a naughty schoolgirl. “You were so embarrassed by the condom demonstration, too.”  
  
“Oh, god.” Jean groaned and pressed her hand over her eyes. “Did you have to ask if you could try it yourself?”  
  
“‘Nothing prepares you for the real world like hands-on training,’” Phoenix pronounced, doing a pretty good imitation of Miss Lehnsherr’s German consonants.  
  
Jean groaned again and buried her face in a pillow. “I’m not going to get that out of my mind any time soon. I hate you, you know.”  
  
“I know,” her doppelganger told her with indecent satisfaction. “But at least you won’t die a virgin with me around to look after you.”  
  
Jean formed a very careful and deliberate mental image of herself chasing Phoenix down the steps of the mansion with a large fire-axe in hand and murder on her mind. The other girl just laughed.  
  
Jean found herself smiling, too. _It could be worse,_ she reminded herself musingly. _I just can’t think of how right now._


	3. Chapter 3

At some point, Jean realized as she dug through her clothes, she and Phoenix had come to an unspoken agreement about their room. The door and the window were neutral ground, and technically the bed, though they were on a kind of unofficial rotation when it came to sheets and blankets because Phoenix liked the way John’s skin looked on silk and Jean stubbornly insisted on sleeping on cotton when it was up to her (plus the whole sensory association thing kinda creeped her out).  The rest of the space was carefully divided: the tight dresses and mini skirts and go-go boots and stilettos went in the left wardrobe (or on the left side of the window seat, or the left chair, or the floor to the left of the bed) and the jeans and pencil skirts and cardigan sets went neatly into the right-side wardrobe. A tasteful flower arrangement sat on the right-hand nightstand, a box of condoms in the drawer of the left. Having two of those was a bit unusual for a student, but Miss Lehnsherr had shrugged and told them that they were technically saving on space, food and furniture already by fitting two students into one body, so she would be happy to find them extra furnishings when they needed them. Phoenix had found that really, really funny for some bizarre reason, and had even tried to calculate how much money they were saving the school by sharing their body so she could demand a bigger allowance before Jean made her drop it. Since the Xaviers already owned the house and staffed the kitchen with students, it hadn’t been that much money anyway.  
  
Jean had agreed to the second chair, vanity table, and wardrobe instead, and she wouldn’t admit it to Phoenix but it was really much better that way. She’d drawn the line at letting Phoenix paint the left wall and ceiling black, though - there was a difference between reasonable accommodations and looking like a schizophrenic when someone glanced in the door.  
  
They’d eventually settled on a ridiculous number of rock band posters, instead.   
  
Jean had found a print of what Phoenix called the most nauseatingly cute basket of kittens she’d ever seen and put it on the right wall in retaliation. She did mostly enjoy the kittens, at least, but she had to admit - if only very silently and in the corner of their mind that Phoenix had eventually settled on treating as hers alone - that it was mainly Phoenix’s groans of dismay whenever she woke up facing it that she treasured.   
  
Miss Lehnsherr liked to say that revenge might be a waste of one’s life, but it could be very satisfying in moderation. Jean knew exactly what she meant. Of course, now that they were almost old enough to start driving, Phoenix was already plotting to get something ridiculously noisy and unsafe, so maybe Mister Xavier had a point when he talked about cycles of retribution, too.  
  
New people came and went more frequently now, potential students and instructors alike, though the school had yet to officially graduate a class. She and John - and Phoenix, she supposed - would be the first when the time came, but for now they studied and learned and practiced their powers while the school grew around them and there was a new mutant with new powers what seemed like every day. Some of them were strange and some were frightening, but all of them were amazing, and if any of them thought there was something strange about the telepath and the telekinetic who shared a mind with each other, the idea usually didn’t last long.   
  
Some new arrivals were stranger than others, of course. Kurt Wagner, for instance, who spoke broken English and had a tail and three-fingered hands and could vanish in a puff of brimstone-stench smoke if you startled him. Well, and was blue, but that was almost a listed minority in the Xavier household at this point.  
  
Three days after Kurt’s arrival at the mansion, the boy was still wearing the same clothes. His discomfort and reluctance to ask for anything made Jean’s throat feel tight. She followed the hum of her foster mother’s mind into the study, sat down in the chair she always used - the one to the right of the desk, instead of the one to the left - and just waited until Miss Lehnsherr finished the letter she was writing and looked up. It didn’t take long. There weren’t a lot of things in the world that took priority over Jean when it came to Miss Lehnsherr, and that was an honor to which she applied all the serious reverence a girl of sixteen could muster.  
  
“He should have more shirts and pants and things,” she said, when she was sure Miss Lehnsherr was ready to give her a full hearing. “We can take his measurements and order them from the Sears catalog.”  
  
Miss Lehnsherr nodded, a tiny, sad smile at the corner of her mouth, and Jean could taste the bittersweet realization that Jean was growing up enough to see things that Erika herself missed in her teacher’s voice when she finally spoke. “Of course. Why don’t you show him?”   
  
Jean brightened, feeling unaccountably pleased and excited by her own unspoken promotion in adult responsibility, and left a kiss on Miss Lehnsherr’s cheek as she hustled from the room to extract the catalog from its usual home in the library. It took a few minutes to find - someone had misfiled it with the French poetry for some reason - but she found it in the end and lugged her prize downstairs to the kitchen, where Kurt was usually to be found satisfying his need to be useful.   
  
He was working through the lunch dishes, as methodically and gracefully as ever in spite of those strange hands of his, and she set the book down to dry the clean plates and put them back into the big cabinets where they belonged. When they finished, she wrapped her fingers around  the teleporter’s two long blue fingers and led him to the table with that gentle firmness she’d learned from watching Miss Lehnsherr - the kind that was never unkind or harsh, but still made clear you were going the way she wanted you to and that was final.  
  
“Here,” she smiled, “there’s just about everything in here. I thought you might want some more clothes.” A flare of shame burned in Kurt’s chest like a stirred coal, and she had to fight down tears in her eyes at the depth of his hurt before she could continue. “Please don’t worry about it,” she soothed, voice automatically gentle, “We take care of each other here.” The shame guttered out slowly, replaced ever so reluctantly with relief. He sighed as he took a seat next to her, but he didn’t try to argue.  
  
After half an hour, they’d filled the mail-order form with the numbers of pants, shirts, a winter coat, socks and underwear, a knit cap, scarves, thick wool mittens, heavy boots, two pairs of shoes, and a black denim jacket. Kurt’s shy smile of gratitude was as overwhelming as a searchlight to someone who could taste his emotions, but Jean managed to keep her composure and simply touch his hand in reply. She’d never understood pride before she came to this house, but she’d had a good teacher in Miss Lehnsherr and an object lesson in the necessity of being gentle with it in Scott.   
  
“Thank you,” he said at last, his English deliberate. “You are most kind.”    
  
Jean only smiled and squeezed his hand. “I look forward to seeing you in the jacket. I think it will be dashing,” she told him, projecting the emotion of the words in case she was asking too much of his vocabulary, and for the first time since he’d come to the house she heard Kurt Wagner laugh. It was a wonderful sound, a full tenor that carried all of the teleporter’s tenderness and nervous, impish excitement and his huge, improbable joy. It was infectious, and she laughed along with him.  
  
It took two weeks for the clothes to arrive, and the jacket was every bit as dashing as she’d suggested it might be. By that time, Kurt no longer haunted his room nearly so often, and if he was as likely to join a conversation while hanging from a rafter or one of the big chandeliers in the main hall as he was from a chair, it seemed to have more to do with his pleasure in being off his feet than any fear of coming down. She’d almost forgotten the moment in the kitchen by Christmas, in fact, which was why it was such a surprise when he came to her a few days before Christmas Eve with a serious look on his face that went a little strangely with the image of a blue elf in a deep green scarf and a knit cap, bearing a large bundle in brown paper and string under one arm.  
  
“Miss Grey,” he began, very carefully and formally, though his pronunciation was now pleasantly free of glottal stops or stressed consonants, “I come with a view to ask you a very important question, yes? It is about Christmas, so timing is of importance.”  
  
Putting her book down, she turned her chair to face him better. “Of course, Kurt. What is it?”  
  
“I am in town with Frau Xavier two days ago, and I see this in the shop window.” He took the bundle and held it out to her, a tentative smile on his face. “I think it is perfect, you see, but I do not know if it will proper fit. I think you try and tell me, yes, and then I know if it will do?”  
  
A buttery-smooth, black leather jacket unfolded in Jean’s hands. “It’s very nice, Kurt,” she began in the same tone everyone anywhere uses for unwished-for gifts. “Is it... um... for me?”  
  
He gave her a look that suggested she was either very dense or that perhaps Americans did not understand how to do things in the proper Old Country way. “It is a Christmas gift and it is not Christmas. Of course it is not for you - then where would surprise be?”  
  
A wave of relief rushed over her, followed by a certain confused embarrassment. “But I thought you wanted me to try it on. I’m not really the same size as Allison or Blair, if that’s what you’re asking...”  
  
“No, no. It is for your sister, yes?” Kurt gave her an earnest smile that suggested that subtlety having failed, he was now going to lead her through his thinking by the hand to iron out any more linguistic or cultural misunderstandings. “I do not speak with her yet, because it seems she is very busy, but I think that since you help me to find clothing for myself, I help you to find clothes for her.”  
  
“Sister? I don’t have a...” Jean stopped, taking a moment to mentally smack herself on the forehead. “It’s for Phoenix! I get it.”    
  
Kurt nodded emphatically, clearly glad that she had caught up with the class even if it had taken her a while to get there. “You are twins, so you can test, yes?”   
  
“Yes,” Jean agreed, a bit dazed as she stood to put the jacket on. Twins. Why didn’t we think of that? Then, of course, she had to start repeating the periodic table to herself in a very loud mental voice to make sure Phoenix didn’t poke her nose in to answer the question and get an early look at her present.   
  
Looking at herself and the jacket Phoenix would probably chase the teleporter through the halls trying to kiss him for, Jean smiled. “Kurt Wagner, you’re a genius.”  
  
“Ah! Good, is a fit.” Kurt smiled, showing his very white and rather sharp teeth in a way that was strangely friendly in spite of the pointy edges. “I have to guess. Is difficult. Now I know your gift will fit also.”  
  
“Kurt,” she asked as she shrugged out of the jacket and returned it to the wrapping, determinedly refusing to go prying around in his thoughts to find out exactly what her present might be, “how did you know she wasn’t me? Since we’re twins, I mean.”  
  
“Ah. Is very simple.” Kurt retrieved his package and smiled again, though with fewer teeth this time. “You float. Phoenix stalks. Especially when she walks with Proudstar, yes?”  
  
“Stalks?”   
  
“Like tiger or lioness,” Kurt affirmed. “I think that I do not want her to be angry with me, yes?”  
  
Holding back a laugh, Jean nodded. “Yeah, she’s pretty mean when she’s angry.”  
  
“Is good for all us that Proudstar tells her yes, ja?” Kurt was a slight boy of fourteen, and it was easy to forget that he wasn’t as young and innocent as he looked. The blandly worldly smile on his face at the moment, however, punched a hole right through that illusion. “Otherwise she perhaps chase him from room to room until he does.”  
  
“I think she did, once,” Jean laughed. “He was just pretending, though, so it worked out.”  
  
Kurt laughed with her, his tenor sweet and light with mirth, and he patted the jacket under his arm with satisfaction. “If she tries to catch me,” he informed her just a little bit smugly, “I am sure to get away.”  
  
Then he vanished with a sharp bamf and a puff of dark smoke, leaving his laughter lingering in the air with the smell of burning brimstone.  
  
Jean carefully picked her way across Phoenix’s territory to open the window, cold or not. She liked Kurt a great deal but was not fond of the sulphur smell he left behind.   
  
_Twins._ Next month, when they took the driver’s test, they’d ask Miss Lehnsherr to get two licences. The Xavier’s relationship with the best forger in New York was just one more on the list of things she and Phoenix weren’t supposed to know about.  
  
 _Twins, huh? And the elf thought of that? Smart boy._ Phoenix drifted up out of the back of her mind and flopped onto the window seat next to her, a little grin on her face. “You know that when we ask, Doctor Lehnsherr is just going to forge me a birth certificate and make us each take the test by ourselves.”  
  
Jean grinned. “Good. You’ll probably flunk the first time, you maniac.”  
  
“Me? Flunk? Not a chance.” Phoenix’s voice sparkled with wicked laughter. “I’ve been borrowing Ororo’s car when she isn’t using it. I’m so going to ace it.”  
  
Jean’s mouth fell open. “Oh my god, you’re going to kill us both, or get us arrested. If you do I swear I’ll ask for more kitten posters. I will plaster the entire right half of the cell with kitten posters.”  
  
“Oh, come on.” Phoenix’s eyes - red and gold, the way they always were in her projected image - glittered with delight. “If I’m going to get arrested, it’s going to be for something way cooler than driving Ororo’s car. Bank robbery, maybe. Jewel theft. Stealing the Commissioner of Police’s daughter’s virtue.”  
  
Jean let her head fall onto the windowsill, thinking about a life of crime and a kitten-poster-of-the-month club. She’d be president. Still... at least life wasn’t likely to be boring. “You’re a menace, sis.”  
  
“And you hate me.”  
  
“And I hate you,” Jean affirmed, wondering how those words could sound so much like _I love you_ sometimes.   
  
“Good, good. Then everything’s as it should be.” Phoenix straightened up and grinned, eyes already on the wardrobe on her side of the room. “Can I use the body for a while? I want to find John, tell him all about this twin thing, and then...”  
  
“Sure. Fine. Have a blast,” Jean groaned. “Just no bruises this time - it’s medical exam season, and I don’t want to have to explain where I got them again.”  
  
“You’re no fun, you know that? I bet if it were Scott leaving hickeys, you wouldn’t complain so much.”  
  
“I really do hate you,” Jean grumbled as she stepped out of her own skin to make room for her sister.   
  
“I know,” Phoenix replied, running a hand through their hair to pick out the pins and already stripping out of the nice little pencil skirt Jean had picked out in the morning. “Isn’t it great?”


End file.
